Monday January 11th (aka Powerball? I Have One Of Those!)

[ecchi]

Rereading the last post I made I realise two things:

1) There is a problem in translation. The maths only work outside the USA, but in the USA you have your own definition of a billion (real billion = 1,000,000,000,000 American billion = 1,000,000,000). So assuming that the prize is 1.3 US billion, that is only 4.33 thousand dollars per person.

2) Only $4,330????? How the hell does the prize get to $4,330 per American? Even if the main prize is 100% of all the money spent on tickets, with no money used to run the lottery, no smaller prizes given, and no profit made from the lottery - that still means that, on average, every single American has spent over four thousand dollars on lottery tickets since the last win!

|cash_bag_emoji

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by ecchi

1) There is a problem in translation. The maths only work outside the USA, but in the USA you have your own definition of a billion (real billion = 1,000,000,000,000 American billion = 1,000,000,000). So assuming that the prize is 1.3 US billion, that is only 4.33 thousand dollars per person.

I thought that math was screwed up. And WTF is the differing billion thing about?? BTW: Wiki never lies:
1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 109 (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now generally the meaning in both British and American English.

Maybe if you updated your browser or OS you'd know this

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by Greenguy

This is now generally the meaning in both British and American English

Being serious though. There was a European thing a few years back that states that in Europe (including Britain) it is 1,000,000,000 unless one or more party/ies is American (not sure if they meant US or continent), then it is 1,000,000.